7 Suggestions For Making Content That Can Go Viral

Content marketing has been a buzzword for quite some time. Every person who makes content wants as many social shares as possible so that it can go viral overnight. Nearly 90 percent of startups use content marketing to advertise their products and services online, so it's no secret that the competitive pressure out here is pretty tough.

However, as soon as your content goes viral, it takes on a life of its own and brings your brand to a whole new audience that you wouldn't be able to reach through traditional means. It could be a YouTube video, a blog post, a tweet, or almost anything else that gets viewed, shared, and discussed about.

At this point, you might think that making your content go viral is just never going to happen and that it’s more about luck than anything else, but the truth is very different. If you want to get people talking about your business or if you just want to learn more about viral content marketing, keep reading.

Don’t Try New Things

This first idea might seem counterintuitive, but if you keep it in mind, at least at the start, it can be very useful. When making a blog post, there is no need to reinvent the wheel each time. You already have content that is being discovered naturally; therefore, you should take advantage of this and improve upon it. Remember that you don't always need to work harder; sometimes you just need to work smarter.

Take a look at your data to see which of your posts are generating the most interest and figure out how to duplicate their success. To find out what people enjoy most about reading your blog, you can use web analytics. Based on what has worked in the past, whether it be the post's format, subject matter, engaging, informative content, title, author, or something else entirely, create a blog editorial calendar with topics that will help you replicate past successes.

Show Don’t Tell

Visual content does well on social media platforms today, so this should be a big part of your content strategy. After all, it's been shown that visuals lead to more shares and engagement.

Whether you share unique photos, graphic design content, video, or branding visuals on your blog, web page, email, social media, etc., they will help you increase conversions and make your content more engaging and appealing. Not only that, but you don't have to be a designer to make and share visuals that look professional these days. In fact, there are a lot of easy-to-use design tools out there that anyone can use, no matter how much they know about design.

Create Interactive Content 

One of the best ways to make content that spreads and makes you stand out is to give the viewer a dynamic, interactive, and personalized experience. A catchy listicle or how-to article just won't do it anymore. Users, especially millennials, are constantly being bombarded with content, so you want yours to be innovative and different.

Even though this can take more time and money to make, your audience will appreciate it. When you add user-generated content to this mix, you have a real recipe for going viral. Quizzes are another thing that are sure to be popular on social media. They let people find out more about themselves and give results that are too good not to share. 

Make It Practical 

The best content always serves a function. It is more likely to be shared if the content you produce has value, whether that value comes from being educational, informative, or entertaining. Because it makes them feel more generous, people enjoy the feeling they get when they share useful content with others. The popularity of "how-to" articles and listicles can be attributed to this fact. If you make your content useful and easy to implement, you will increase your chances of it going viral, which will lead to more traffic and more exposure.

Make It Easy To Consume 

Here's a shocking fact: only 16 percent of people who visit your website read all of an article or blog post you wrote. It's not that people don't want to read, it's just that content comes at them from every direction every day of the week. That means only truly interesting posts will get their attention. 

This is why experts in digital marketing say you should keep it simple and compact if you want people to stay on the page. Use subheadings in bold, short paragraphs, bullet points, and a lot of white space on the page. Content that is easy to scan is more likely to be read all the way through and so is more likely to go viral.

Make Sharing Easy

You must make the sharing process extremely simple if you want a lot of shares. You can accomplish this in a variety of ways, from prominent buttons at the top of your page to a share button integrated into your call to action. Using a plugin that keeps the sharing buttons to one side of the page as readers scroll up and down is another excellent way to include them. Make sure the sharing buttons are visible to readers at all times; otherwise, they will be much less likely to share your content.

Evoke Emotion

The field of psychology has taught us that various audiences have varying levels of interest in various topics. If you want your content to be humorous, you should consider who you're writing for in terms of age. That's because people of various ages have vastly different humor preferences. To give just one example, millennials are much more likely to laugh at intentionally absurd or self-deprecating jokes than older generations. However, wit and irony, two more traditional forms of humor, may be better received by an older target audience.

The point is that you need to do some introspection about your target demographic. Why do they act the way they do? What exactly gets under their skin? Find out what really hurts them and what they want. In this way, you can strike an emotional chord with them through the content you serve up specifically for them.